When the Rains Come
by ChibiRisu-chan
Summary: NaruSasu mpreg fan fanfic based on Imbrium Iridum's SelfReliance world. A day in the life of Sasuke and kitten. Complete with a nice family visit from Itachi and his Mangekyou Sharingan: the psychopath version of a baby shower...
1. When the Rains Come

Yet another fan-fanfic, this one for Imbrium Iridum/TheNinjaKitty, based on her Self-Reliance-universe. It's not following canon for anything -- anime or manga Naruto or the SRverse -- 'cause I've got no idea what Kitty's plot is going to be like. Hence the calling it a fan-fanfic! I just wanted to play with Itachi, who promptly launched into head games. This is the first chapter of 3 or 4...

* * *

It was drizzling out, the kind of gray miserable day that made Sasuke furtively glad of Neji's warm purring little gift, even if he'd never admit it aloud. Mercifully, the kitten had outgrown its need to be dropper-fed at all hours, but it was still far too adorable for Sasuke's dignity. So he only scooped up the little warm ball of fluff and snuggled it when he was quite, _quite_ confident that he was alone. ...And that all the blinds were drawn, and Kakashi wasn't among the ANBU on patrol to try to show up without warning, and Naruto was buried under some paperwork-avalanche in the Hokage's Tower.

...It wasn't paranoia when psychotic snake-perverts and genocidal elder siblings really _were_ out to get a person, after all. The fact that he could take advantage of that in order to hide his distressing addiction to kitten-snuggles was just a beneficial coincidence.

The kitten had decided somewhere along the line that it liked high places. The top of the refrigerator apparently put off enough warmth and vibration to remind the kitten of its mother, and so Sasuke had put a fluffy scrap of an old yellow blanket up there once, when he was equally sure nobody was looking, and the kitten had enthusiastically decided that the refrigerator-blanket was Mama.

There were some unforeseen consequenses of this, though. The blanket was nearly the same vivid sunny gold as Naruto's hair. And the kitten liked stalking and pouncing nearly as much as it liked high places. So every so often there would be a tiny-but-enthusiastic 'mrowwr!' followed by a screech and several clatters, bangs, and thuds, and then Naruto would stalk out of the kitchen dripping whatever food he'd been trying to make and wearing a small and ferociously tail-lashing hat on his way into the bathroom to clean up.

It was only fair to tease him mercilessly about this, since Naruto teased Sasuke about his increasing girth all the time. Sasuke speculated at length about Naruto's appreciation for having fluffy things with teeth attached to the top of his head, whether kittens or ratty old sleeping caps, and whether Kyuubi would agree with him that it showed a subconscious urge to have something else of a generally fluffy-and-containing-teeth-shape around another head, and by that time Naruto was generally tomato-colored and spluttering a mile a minute and flailing around madly.

It usually bought him enough time to make a cup of tea, because Naruto knew he couldn't simply pounce on him anymore, and verbal retorts never had been the dobe's strong point, which left him in quite a wheel-spinning quandary, much to Sasuke's satisfaction.

Naruto considered it profoundly unfair that the kitten never jumped on Sasuke's head, just his shoulder, where the kitten proceeded to balance carefully and look out at the world with bright curious little eyes. Sasuke never admitted he'd trained the kitten out of jumping on his head by wearing another bit of sunny-Naruto-fluff-mommy-blanket on his shoulder. There were _some_ advantages to being home on maternity leave with little to do beyond study scrolls full of knowledge he wouldn't be able to apply for months, after all.

It had gotten so that the kitten didn't even need the encouragement of the blanket anymore, though; when Sasuke opened the kitchen door and bent a bit to peer in, that provided more of a landing-pad than usual, and so he wasn't really surprised to feel a soft thump between his shoulderblades, followed by some scrambling as the kitten found its balance again. Sasuke felt a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and fought it back ferociously, because he was walking around with far too many expressions on his face already and he wanted fewer bad habits to have to train himself out of when he could begin fighting again.

And the fact that he had a kitten toddling on his shoulder had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he picked out a container of blueberry yogurt. Or that, once done stirring with a spoon, he somehow managed to get a bit of yogurt on his finger, or that his finger somehow found its way toward his shoulder.

Unlike some people in the house, the kitten had no reservations at all about loudly and enthusiastically expressing how much it _loved_ yogurt. Its little pink tongue tried to rasp his skin right off along with the yogurt drips, and so Sasuke had to put more yogurt on his finger from simple self-defense really.

...From the sheer volume of the purr rumbling away by his ear, Sasuke sometimes wondered if Neji had gotten this one's motor out of a full-sized panther instead, and conveniently forgotten to mention that detail.

The kitten's little sandpaper-and-tickles tongue made quick work of the second dose of yogurt as well, and then it began nuzzling at his palm and licking at the rest of his fingers to try to capture any stray molecules of kitty-bliss-inducing substances. Stifling a laugh with a supreme effort, because the tongue _and_ the whiskers _and_ the fluffy little face were all conspiring against his willpower with a triple-teaming tickle assault, Sasuke bit his lower lip to keep himself silent and spooned some more yogurt into the lid of the container.

The kitten wasn't about to wait for it to be served; it scrambled down the slope of his ribcage and tumbled onto his belly and sat up on its hind paws, reaching both forepaws for the yogurt lid in his hand and mewling eagerly.

Despite himself, Sasuke glanced around one more time for any potential witnesses to this horrendous onslaught of _cute_ before setting the lid on the curve of his stomach for the kitten to bury its nose in. That left both hands free for his own yogurt, which he really needed to eat before the kitten ate its share and went looking for more. Its little gray-striped tail was happily curled around the crook of Sasuke's elbow, so it was a bit awkward to get a spoon into his mouth without disturbing the kitten, but he managed.

Thankfully, he finished his own yogurt-cup long before the kitten got done polishing every last yogurt-molecule off the lid, so that when the kitten blinked big blue eyes up at him and mewed, Sasuke could say with a straight face, "That's all. Any more and your stomach won't thank you later, you little pig."

The kitten put a paw on Sasuke's elbow and mewed again, looking utterly forlorn.

With a sigh that nearly unbalanced the kitten from its perch on the curve of his belly, Sasuke ran a fingertip around the inside of the yogurt container and offered his finger for polishing.

...Those little paws were so unfairly soft, particularly when the kitten was being careful not to use its tiny, prickly needle-claws; the little mooch had learned early on that a mew and a velvet-pawed bat received much more indulgence from its people than claws and squalling did.

Sasuke took another fingertip-swipe at the inside of the yogurt container just in case, because in a few minutes the kitten was going to try to shove its head into the empty container as usual, and he wanted the results to be as close to tidy as possible. The little beast was an insatiable glutton, an attention-hog, more capricious than a barrel of monkeys, always getting into everything, always underfoot, playing with anything that dangled -- from sleeves to hair to shoelaces to the ends of unguarded chopsticks -- constantly rotating through bouts of manic wide-eyed scampering interspersed with collapses into naps wherever its feet stopped running (often tumbling into sudden kitten-sized snores on one's ankle, belly, chest, forearm, or sometimes one's face, depending on what would be maximally inconvenient at that particular moment)...

...all in all, he wondered why he'd never included a kitten in The Plan to begin with.

It was certainly good practice for dealing with Naruto, who also dealt out calamity, manic scrambling around, adorable stupidity, and sudden snuggle-naps with equally mindless abandon; and Sasuke had often thought that dealing with Naruto was good practice for dealing with small squirming wild things that shrieked nonsense and thrashed a lot and occasionally smelled bad and needed bathing with or against their will. So, from a certain perspective, kitten-raising did seem like an effective course of study in pre-parenthood...

Sasuke sighed again when the kitten wedged its head into the empty yogurt cup and shoved until the plastic bumped up against Sasuke's chin; the vigorous licking sounds coming from inside informed him that clearly he'd been remiss in his efforts to extract every last hint of yogurt-essence from the vessel. It was usually only a minute or two before...

...right, there was his cue: the kitten began backpedalling and almost tumbled off its perch atop the baby-bulge in its efforts to extract its head long enough to breathe again. Sasuke caught the kitten gently in one hand and the yogurt cup with the other, and separated the two, and put the lid on the yogurt cup to set aside while the kitten shook its head and batted at its ears and tried to groom both its whiskers and the back of its head with a great deal of pawing and licking and the inevitable yogurt-bliss-purring.

Adorable little idiot.

...Sasuke had to admit he'd developed quite a weakness for adorable blue-eyed idiots lately.

This particular little idiot was padding in a little circle at the place where the arch of his chest met the curve of his belly, kneading his shirt a bit to shape whatever constituted a proper kitten bed at the moment.

Sasuke reminded himself again not to get _too_ used to smiling, as the warm little fluffball snuggled down atop his belly (because that spot was softer and rounder than poky ribs or shoulders) and settled in with a drowsily contented purr.

The fur on the back of its head was still a bit yogurt-spiky and sticking-out, and Sasuke stifled a chuckle at the thought of how his Baby was even learning hairstyling techniques from him as he smoothed the fur down with a light fingertip. The kitten yawned and stretched and curled its tail about his forearm affectionately, capturing his wrist with a paw and licking at his fingertips again with sleep-hazy eyes.

"I _was_ going to use that hand to turn pages, you know," Sasuke informed the kitten, whose purrs were drifting more and more toward snores with every breath. "...Hmph. Little nuisance."

It wasn't like he hadn't learned to flip pages one-handed, between a snuggle-prone kitten and a snuggle-prone Naruto. But flipping pages _and_ taking notes one-handed was still a little out of range, and for one brief disturbing moment Sasuke wondered how useful a prehensile tongue might be after all. He couldn't tuck his knees up enough to brace the book against them, in order to hold the book balanced between hand-pressure and knee while noting, and an extra limb could prove more than handy when trying to deal with three at once... five, if he counted the kitten and Naruto...

Sasuke sighed, and left the book on the table, and brushed his fingertips lightly over the soft fur at the kitten's forehead; he shifted the free hand to press against his side, where one of his own young ones was kicking a staccato. "No, kits," he said to his stomach, feeling very silly, but talking to them often seemed to work for Naruto. "I haven't forgotten you either. Trust me. The next time _you_ spend this many months carrying around this much extra weight and getting kicked in implausible places at the least convenient times possible, you'll know it's not possible to forget you lot."

The baby kicked again, and one of its neighbors pushed back, and Sasuke bit down on a sigh. "No pleasing all of you, is there?" he asked, rubbing carefully. "The kitten wants me sitting still, you want me moving about to rock you... I should've picked the rocking chair, shouldn't I."

With impeccable timing, someone knocked on the front door, and Sasuke groaned.

"Just come in!" he called, because their friends knew how long it could take him to find another perch for the kitten and to coax his clumsy bulk out of their comfortable but awkwardly deep furniture.

More than one pair of feet shuffled their way out of sandals in the entryway, and Iruka-sensei's voice was strangely muted in the entryway: "Put those in the kitchen -- yes, quietly, little ones; we don't want to disturb the Hokage's young family..."

"But I wanna see!"

"Later," Iruka said, planting himself like a barricade in front of the sliding shoji screen that divided the hall from the living room where Sasuke was resting. "When the Hokage's here for you to pester, so that his betrothed can rest. Understand? Off to the kitchen with you, now."

There was some grumbling, followed by the patter of little feet down the hall; in a few minutes they were back, and scuffling into sandals again, and then the flock of them scampered out the door and scattered to whatever winds carried academy children given an unexpected respite from classes. Sasuke had let himself relax when he'd realized that Iruka was going to shield him from the onslaught of noisy and curious ninja children, and so he startled back to wakefulness at a quiet tap on the shoji screen.

"Sasuke?"

"All the vermin are gone, aren't they, Iruka-sensei?" Sasuke replied a bit warily, looking around for a blanket or something he could use as concealment just in case. "You can come in if you'd like."

"'Vermin,'" Iruka echoed, amused, as he slid the door open and leaned a shoulder against the frame. "Are you entirely certain you want to have children of your own, Sasuke?"

"Mostly," Sasuke grunted. "When they don't kick so much."

There was something unreadable in his former teacher's eyes, something that rippled half-hidden, like a glimpse of some swift creature slipping through the waters of a still and shady pond. Sasuke felt Iruka's gaze as though it were nearly a physical touch -- standing there seeing the former top rookie of the year all but incapacitated by the awkwardness of his physical condition, seeing the brittle and sharp-edged young avenger sprawled on a sofa with a sleeping kitten atop his child-swollen belly, his hand held captive by nothing but a wish not to disturb the kitten's rest -- and Sasuke tensed despite himself.

_It's Iruka-sensei,_ Sasuke tried to tell his instincts. _Iruka-sensei, the one who still gives our new Hokage noogies and feeds him ramen and sniffles over the prospect of his students growing up and having families -- that's all it is; that's the emotion I'm seeing, he's not judging me for my weakness-- I'm judging myself--_

Sasuke forced the ridiculous panic back, because the man was Naruto's only family in all but blood, and of course he would feel an uncle's indulgent pride in the sight of his students' unborn children, and in their 'mother's' evident condition. Still, it was hard to fight back the reflex to hide, to distract his teacher's gaze from his weakness, his helpless vulnerability. He couldn't help moving the kitten aside to a pillow, despite its plaintive little half-sleeping mew, so that the picture he made in his teacher's eyes wouldn't be quite so defenseless.

"I'm disturbing your rest, aren't I," Iruka murmured, unusually quiet for a man more accustomed to barking orders over the noise of a crowded classroom. "I hadn't realized -- how heavy you've grown, how swiftly these days and weeks pass for you... Forgive my intrusion; I should leave you to rest, to gather what there is of your strength now. I never meant to disturb you."

"Don't go," Sasuke said, with an effort. "I'm sorry, Iruka-sensei. I'm just... still not used to this. To being looked at as though I'm..." He stopped, and shook his head, and regretfully freed his hand from the kitten's drowsy grasp. "Stay a little. If you have time. I mean... you're... You're speaking so formally, but I'm still --I'm just your old student, Naruto's still Naruto, it's not like... like he's changed, or like I've changed him because I... --anyway, I'll make us some tea if that'd help... I mean..."

"You'd _like_ to talk? With me?" The undercurrent of surprise was muted, but still clear; Sasuke bit back a near hysterical laugh.

"Am I _that_ antisocial, Iruka-sensei?"

He'd expected the man to blush and laugh and scratch behind an ear; instead, with a small, rueful half-smile, his teacher replied, "Have you ever been otherwise?"

"Uh..." Sasuke stopped, and blinked, and hoped his face wasn't burning as much as it felt like, because he hadn't expected to need an answer for a question like that.

"Stay there, and rest," Iruka told him. "I'll prepare the tea; I remember where it's stored." And he turned down the hall toward the kitchen, clearly not willing to accept no for an answer.

Sasuke fought with himself -- and with gravity -- for a moment, then sighed and called, "Six months from now I'm making the tea, Iruka-sensei. Just... not today."

Then, a bit stiffly, he added, "Thank you." It was getting easier to say things like 'please' and 'thank you' now that it was getting harder to deny his needs. Not easy, not yet; just easier by comparison.

The tea was an awkwardly silent affair; unlike his easy chatting and teasing with Naruto, Iruka seemed to be unbalanced by both Sasuke's reserved personality and the evidence of Sasuke's condition, and he watched the younger man in quiet astonishment. At one point, he set his teacup down and ventured, "You wished to talk?"

Sasuke felt his face burning. "I'm... not good at it. --Sorry, sensei, I... just..." He shrugged a little, clumsily.

His teacher's voice was a bit rueful. "You don't seem to have these difficulties with arguing. Especially with your Hokage."

"_You_ don't make a habit of pissing me off until my choices are screaming or killing things," Sasuke muttered, glaring at his teacup. Iruka chuckled.

"I can practice, if you'd like."

"Don't bother," Sasuke said with a sigh, shifting his weight awkwardly to reach for the teapot. "Naruto takes up more than his fair share of the available frustration-space in both our lives."

Iruka took the teapot and refilled Sasuke's cup to spare him the struggle with the sofa, then refilled his own cup as well, and sat back with both hands cupped around it for warmth. "I'm not here to make you uncomfortable in any way," he said. "Quite the opposite. If you wish to talk, then let us talk; if you wish for quiet, I'll leave you in peace to rest."

"You're being so formal," Sasuke murmured, unhappy. He didn't know how to say _I want you to scruffle my hair and laugh the way you do with Naruto and Kakashi-sensei,_ not when he'd spent so long building up defenses to keep people from daring anything of the sort.

Iruka looked down into his teacup to avoid his student's eyes. "I don't want to upset you, to push your boundaries -- I'm sure you've had more than enough of that since you returned to this village full of gossips..."

"I _trust_ you, Iruka-sensei," Sasuke said impatiently. But for some reason, that widened the schoolteacher's eyes.

"Why?" he asked. "What is it about a weak chuunin academy teacher that's earned your trust? You've always been so focused on power, and I can't offer it to you anymore; but so many of you trust me with power regardless-- the ANBU outside didn't even stop us when the children and I brought groceries..."

"Should they have?" Sasuke replied, dryly. "What damage are you going to do with a bottle of orange juice and a fort of instant ramen?"

"You should be better guarded than this," Iruka said, still studying his tea. "Both of you should. Especially now that he is Hokage and you are-- as you are. It's _ludicrous_ that they let me walk through without so much as a question."

"Everyone trusts you, Iruka-sensei," Sasuke said. "You're one of the kindest, most decent people in the village. That's a strength of its own, one that has nothing to do with blood and war, and -- we need that, all of us, even though I'm terrible at admitting it most of the time." He looked down at the little gray handful of drowsing kitten, and ruffled its fur gently. "I'm learning, though. I'm finally starting to learn the kinds of strength that you taught Naruto so many years ago... I'm just slow sometimes. I'm sorry."

Iruka closed his eyes. "What I regret is that I never taught you to find your own strength."

It stung, a little. "Sensei...?"

"You are _not_ Naruto," his teacher said. "You are not jinchuuriki, and you are not your brother, and not your father, and not your teacher the Copy-Nin of Konoha, and not the snake that tried to make you his own, since you had no sense of your own strength to resist him. You are simply yourself, and always have been -- and you've never understood what that means. You've never wanted to understand what that means. You've spent too much of your life chasing other people's shadows, rather than learning about who _you_ are, and what _your_ unique strength is. All of your teachers, we've all failed you in that lesson: the only one you've never learned, despite our hopes for you. Forgive us for failing you in that most vital lesson of all."

It felt like being unexpectedly doused in ice water, to learn that he'd disappointed the gentle, laughing man who'd given Naruto such solid and loving support for so many years. _I told myself I wanted him to stop sugar-coating everything in formality_, Sasuke thought fiercely. _I wanted this, now it's time to deal with having it--_

"I'm sorry," Iruka said. "You didn't want to hear that; you never have. And I've upset you again."

"No," Sasuke said, through gritted teeth, because damn it, he was _not going to cry._ Not again. Damn hormones, damn exhaustion, damn weakness, damn all of it-- "no, I'm fine."

"Sasuke--"

"I'm _fine."_ He hauled himself out of the sofa by sheer force, picked up the teapot, and stumbled half-blind toward the kitchen for more hot water, just for something to do. His hands shook as he poured water from the pan into the teapot, and he set the pan down hastily before he could spill it on himself; then he leaned both hands on the countertop and fought with every bit of strength remaining to him not to let himself cry.

Iruka's footsteps had been silent, following him, but he tapped softly on the kitchen doorframe as a courtesy before he entered. He hesitated for a long, silent moment, then placed a gentle hand on the hollow of Sasuke's back and rubbed a little.

It broke the last of his control; he turned into Iruka's arms and buried his face in the man's shoulder so that at least his teacher couldn't see his face while he sobbed like a child. Like a weak, pathetic, needy _child_...

After a moment's stunned, frozen shock, Iruka put both arms around him and held him quietly.

"If you can forgive me for failing you in my teaching, and trust me despite it," he murmured, "surely you can forgive yourself for being yourself, rather than everyone else you've wanted to be."

"...it's not... not the same...!" He broke off with a gasp, hissing between his teeth as one of the children kicked straight up into his lungs, catching his breath short. "Damn it--!"

"Pain?" Iruka asked, concerned. "Do you need to sit, or to lie down?"

If he could have taken a deep enough breath to reply, he would have tried, but all he could manage was panting through clenched teeth and a gesture toward the teapot and then the living room. He'd meant it for 'let's drink the tea, I'll be fine in a minute,' but his teacher gathered a different meaning from his white-faced, white-knuckled gasping.

Much to Sasuke's shock, Iruka lifted him into his arms with barely an effort, and carried him to the sofa, and shooed the kitten off the pillow in order to gently lay him on his side. Iruka gathered up the discarded blanket and settled it carefully over him, then reached a cautious hand toward his abdomen, and then hesitated.

"It's all right," Sasuke gasped, still struggling to catch his breath around a flurry of kicks inside. He took his teacher's hand and pressed it into his distended belly, hoping the movement within would explain what he lacked the breath for: no contractions this time, just over-vigorous kicks at the lungs from too many little feet. "See? Fine... just-- ow..."

Iruka was still as a stone, not even breathing, staring at Sasuke's hand and his own intertwined upon the taut, child-swollen curve of his student's abdomen. One of the children kicked at their hands, and he drew a sharp breath.

"Iruka-sensei?" Sasuke asked, fighting back the impulse to laugh, because it would take too much air. "Sensei, don't... don't pass out on me here...! I'm in no shape to run for the med-nins...!"

"No," his teacher agreed softly, smoothing Sasuke's hair back from his face with a careful, tender hand, as though he were much younger than he was; but for once, somehow, Sasuke couldn't quite mind. "No condition to run, or to fight, and so those of us who can must protect you from any harm. Even from yourself."

Sasuke blinked. "Sensei...?"

Iruka's hand was warm and solid against his cheek, gently turning his head so that their eyes met.

In their teacher's kind, friendly, scarred face, the eyes were bloody crimson, three black wedges spinning.

"Mangekyou Sharingan," his teacher murmured, still so soft-voiced and tender, and Sasuke didn't even have time to scream.


	2. Kaleidoscope Dreams

**When the Rains Come, part 2:  
Kaleidoscope Dreams**

**

* * *

**When Sasuke gasped in a futile moment's struggle and then slumped against the sofa, limp and unconscious in the grip of the Mangekyou, his kitten made a curious little noise, sleepy ears pricking toward its person's face.

Itachi watched as the tiny creature jumped almost onto the sofa, back legs scrabbling for purchase in the fabric until it could scramble its way up beside Sasuke's sleeping face. It cocked its head this way and that, bent to snuffle at Sasuke's nose to be sure he was breathing, batted at his nose with a paw, and waited for a reaction. When none was forthcoming, it batted at his cheek and waited, and then shoved its face against his, and then stood on his face, both forepaws balanced on his cheek, to shove its nose into his ear and snuffle around.

Apparently, the little thing was accustomed to deep sleepers who wouldn't swat it away by reflex; still, Itachi picked the kitten up and smoothed its fur until it stopped struggling in his hands and settled in to sniff at the new person. It licked at Itachi's thumb, then tried a tentative nibble, careful of its teeth; Itachi suspected that the Kyuubi-bearer likely kitten-wrestled with the tiny thing, but his brother likely wouldn't, and so it was testing the new person's wrestle-inclinations. Itachi simply held it in Iruka's tanned hands, and rubbed between tiny fragile shoulderblades until it gave up its halfhearted gestures toward gnawing and yawned hugely. Then he settled it on the sofa next to the curve of his younger brother's cheek, and held it still for a moment.

"Stay," he told it, "and be polite. If you can."

The kitten blinked enormous blue eyes up at him, and Itachi thought that they must have chosen the kitten for its resemblance to the Kyuubi-bearer: wide shining sky-bright eyes, a sweetly mischievous disposition, and far too many trouble-instincts for its size.

It reached over and patted at Sasuke's face again, clearly upset by its person's unresponsiveness; and Itachi sighed a bit and set a fingertip beneath its chin, crouching on his heels to meet its innocent stare with the power in his own gaze.

"Sleep, then," he murmured, "and dream of milk, and catnip."

The sudden volume of the kitten's purr actually startled him for a moment as the kitten yawned and licked its chops and snuggled against Sasuke's tousled hair, all but vibrating with happy rumbles.

Itachi watched them rest for a moment, then straightened the blanket over his brother's unconscious form, smoothing it against the shape of his body, tucking it about his shoulders; he left a lingering palm to rest against the curve of that heavy round belly for a moment. One of the children stirred beneath his hand, and Itachi sighed, unwillingly amused despite himself.

"You are your parents' children, after all," he said with a wry quirk tugging at his lips. "Too stubborn by half, and unwilling to simply rest and accept anything when you could be squabbling about it. It is unfortunate that I cannot grant you rest as well; but at the least you shall not disturb him now."

He stood, and made his way silently toward the kitchen and the groceries that the children had carried to increase the plausibility of his borrowed facade's visit. Much as Sasuke had guessed, one of the bags held healthy food, and the rest held instant ramen -- well, and there was also a package of dango in there, because he would have some time to spend before anyone with the power to break his hold on the boy realized what was going on. First, though, he busied himself with putting away the groceries; it was a simple, mundane thing for this body to do, allowing him to spare the concentration to turn his focus inward, to where his brother still struggled uselessly in the snare of his mind.

* * *

At first, there was nothing, in a world carved of shadow and crimson flame, not even sound; Sasuke could feel himself trying to scream, trying to see, trying to move, and yet there was nothing, until there was Itachi beside him with a face sculpted of midnight and hair like a shred of silk torn from a bloody moon.

"Impatient," Itachi said, blood-filled eyes burning like coals. "Always so impatient, always so eager to bite off more than you can chew, until you choke on it--" He reached a cold iron-black hand up to trace a kanji that burned upon Sasuke's forehead, and whispered, "Deeper."

* * *

There was something that was supposed to be wrong, Sasuke remembered that, but it was hazy and distant, as though he was looking up from the bottom of some dark, still pond at the glimmer of moonlight so far overhead, so far out of reach, and nothing mattered, not even air really, because the underwater world was so cool and calm and still. He was somehow surprised to realize that he could breathe without choking, but moving was beyond him; even opening his eyes was too much effort, and so he floated in the dark and listened to the sound of his brother's voice.

There was something he was supposed to remember about his brother...

...it slipped out of his grasp, like some swift silent fish, a mere flicker and then gone.

"All of space," his brother murmured to him, "all of time, all of matter -- beneath the blood moon of Tsukuyomi, all rests within my grasp."

He felt his brother's hand upon his shoulder, and then remembered that he had a shoulder.

"Each breath you take, each beat of your heart, all that you are and all that you feel -- all of this is subject to my control. Do you understand?"

Sasuke was nothing but a leaf floating deep in the silent water, with no will to reply; Itachi sighed, and touched his cheek, and he remembered that he had a face, and so he nodded in the water, pliant and unresisting.

Itachi simply gazed at him for a moment, and then put an arm about his shoulders, and they floated together toward the surface again, where there was light and air waiting, and as they drifted upward Sasuke could feel his body again: hands, and fingers, and his feet were cold, and breath in his lungs, and weight pulling at his lower back -- so much weight, why so much? He looked down, and remembered: _oh, that's right, I was-- I am--_

* * *

Sasuke gasped for breath, and pushed himself up on one elbow, and shook his head as though expecting water to splatter from drenched-flat hair; he was oddly surprised when it simply ruffled, dry and wild as ever.

There was a fire crackling in the firepit of an old-fashioned, oddly familiar room, and an old wooden horigotatsu-style table with a dark-haired figure seated beside it. Long, black hair, gathered at the nape of his neck, blood-red eyes--

Sasuke lunged to his feet and overbalanced wildly; he clutched at one of the roof-posts and stared down at himself. He was too light, his clothing hung loose on his body -- too loose, far too loose--

"_What did you do to them?"_

Itachi sighed. "Sit," he said, and Sasuke found his knees folding despite himself. He opened his mouth to shout, and suddenly the fear and the panic had drained out of him too, leaving nothing to fill the hollow but a faint bewilderment.

With the last bit of self-control left to him, Sasuke whispered, "What are you doing to them...?"

Itachi gestured toward a futon spread on the floor on the other side of the table; three wriggling little bundles all swaddled in white were nestled into each other. Sasuke couldn't see their faces, but he could feel the horrible lightness of his own body, and he would have been sick and furious if that much control had been left to him. The resentment was just as faint as the bewilderment had been. "Why...?"

"You let your emotions control you too much for your well-being, or for theirs," Itachi said calmly, slowly, as though explaining to a dim child. "The adrenaline of panic, of anger and rage and fear -- you would not be able to control your emotions through this discussion; you've already proven that. And so I keep your consciousness at a distance from your body's functions, both for your sake and for theirs. They seem to be in a playful mood, and you can concentrate more clearly when you are not distracted by the discomfort of too-strong movements within. I do expect you to concentrate; this is a lesson you've never been willing to accept from any of your teachers, myself included, and I have never been a patient man."

"...they're going to be all right?"

"Certainly," Itachi said, bending to tend the fire. "Far better than they would have been had we held this conversation with you driving yourself mad over your fury and pain and guilt, unable to simply think and listen."

After a long minute's struggle with the haze in his mind that separated him from anything resembling emotion, Sasuke asked, "May I touch them?"

Itachi didn't respond aloud; but this time when Sasuke tried to move, his body responded, and so he crept over to where his children lay half-drowsing in a puppylike tangle of wriggling arms and feet. They were warm, and so terrifyingly tiny, and when he reached a hesitant finger toward one little hand, the tiny fingers curled about his.

If he'd been able to feel his heart, it might have broken just then. "Tell me," Sasuke said, oddly light-headed at the lack of the fear and protective fury he should have been feeling. "Tell me what I have to do so that you'll return them to me safely."

Itachi sighed again, and took the old iron teapot that had been hanging over the fire, and poured two cups of tea. "You're not _listening_," he chided, weary-voiced. "You never have listened."

"Then use small words," Sasuke said, proud of the hint of a growl in a voice that had been almost smoothed flat by the haze. "Talk to me like I'm Naruto."

Itachi seemed to consider it for a moment, and then he stood and stretched and blurred, his body broadening, his ash-pale skin warming with a touch of gold and tan, and then familiar dark eyes blinked down at Sasuke from a scarred and friendly face.

"Damn it, not like _that_!" Sasuke snapped, shuddering. "What did you do to Iruka-sensei?"

'Iruka' gave a much more exprssive sigh than Itachi had. "Contrary to popular opinion," his teacher's mild voice said, "I find no challenge in slaughtering those significantly weaker than myself. One would expect that the evidence would tend to support my claim. If I did make a habit of such things, you would not be here to argue with me, after all."

"_What_ did you _do_--"

"The last I saw of them, your academy teacher and the copy-nin were in his apartment watching some horrible barely-plotted pornographic movie with ridiculously insinuating music and even worse effects. --To be accurate, the copy-nin was drooling over the movie and your teacher was struggling not to spontaneously combust from humiliation. The only threat to their evening would be if the teacher bursts a blood vessel, and it will be none of my doing; I am not so great a fool as to confront both Copy-nin Kakashi and his excessively protective and loud-voiced young lover in the very center of Konoha." Itachi met his gaze squarely from behind Iruka's face. "_Now_ will you believe me? I am not naive enough to ask for your trust, but I do expect a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief."

"...Fine," Sasuke muttered, trying to get his glare back if nothing else. "Just -- get the hell out from behind Iruka-sensei's face. It's just wrong."

Iruka shrugged a bit, and crumpled inwards, dwindling back into Itachi's own slight, pale, deceptively fragile-looking body. "Is there another teacher whose voice you would accept more than you accept mine?"

"Just tell me what I have to do!"

"I've tried," Itachi said, with a thread of frustration in his normally too-calm voice. "You simply need to listen and think. I have done all I can to answer you, and yet you never listen..."

"How can you expect me to want to listen to you?" Sasuke whispered. "You know what you've done, you know what I've sworn--"

"That would be why I've taken these precautions."

They stared at each other for a long, silent moment, caught at an impasse.

Itachi lifted one of the cups of tea from the low table, and offered it. Sasuke struggled with himself for a moment, then moved to sit at the table and took the cup from his brother's hands.

"I'm listening," he said.

"We'll see," Itachi replied, weary-voiced, and reached across the table to trace another mark upon his brow.

* * *

This time when Sasuke came to himself, he was in the old Uchiha training grounds in a grove on their lands, with faded and crumbling straw targets still tied to the trees from years before. He spun on his heel at the sound of footsteps, grateful for the first time that the children were safely elsewhere in this mad nightmare world of his brother's, so that he could face whatever challenge Itachi planned for him without fear of his own inability to fight.

And then he clutched at the nearest tree for support, because the person who came crunching happily through the trees was his six-year-old self, dragging a too-young Itachi along with him.

The older Itachi put a steadying hand on his shoulder; Sasuke shrugged it off, still unable to summon as much anger as he needed, but his brother faded back into the shadows and left him to watch their younger selves.

The truth was, he hadn't been very good, and Itachi hadn't been all that patient with his six-year-old fumblings. Sasuke remembered his own awe at his big brother's talents, and even from the vantage point of a dozen years, the child Itachi had been was still impressive -- not yet flawless, but absolutely driven, and unwilling to accept distraction. Eventually, the child Sasuke had been gave up on earning his brother's attention, and simply watched until he fell asleep. He woke briefly when Itachi lifted him onto his back to carry him home, and giggled a little sheepishly.

"I'm sorry I fell asleep, nii-san..."

Itachi didn't reply, simply adjusting his brother's weight and balance on his back before picking up his nin-pack and his brother's.

"I'm going to be strong someday too," Sasuke confided, "and make you and Father proud of me."

"Are you now," Itachi replied, almost smiling. "What is your strength, then?"

"I'm your little brother!" Sasuke said proudly. "I'm going to grow up and be just like you!"

Itachi reached over his shoulder and flicked his little brother's forehead lightly, and set off into the woods.

When Sasuke moved to follow them, the older Itachi stopped him again. "Have you learned where you were mistaken?" he asked, holding out a shuriken.

Sasuke took it from him, and stared at it, and then at the target, and he said bitterly, "Yes. I didn't cut your throat when I had the chance."

He threw the shuriken, and the world spun madly beneath him, and then his own shuriken landed in his shoulder; the haze over the world kept it from hurting the way it should have, but he looked at the blood trickling down his arm in morbid fascination.

"Try again," Itachi said, and handed him another shuriken. "What was your strength, back then?"

"I had no strength," Sasuke whispered, and this time he threw the shuriken at Itachi's throat. Itachi simply inclined his head; the shuriken passed close enough to sever a few long dark strands of his hair.

"Wrong again," Itachi replied, and pulled the shuriken out of the tree it had stuck to, and tossed it lightly back to Sasuke. "Have you ever understood the source of your own strength?"

"My strength is my hatred for you," Sasuke spat, and threw the shuriken at him again, harder.

It cracked the chalkboard of the academy classroom, and his classmates turned to stare and giggle; Iruka looked up from his lesson book with one brow twitching dangerously, and for the first time in years Sasuke found himself stammering an apology as he sank into a seat that was too short for his lanky teenager's build. Next to him, Naruto pulled down an eyelid and stuck out his tongue; his rude gesture of response was pure reflex, and on his other side, Itachi made a sound of amusement.

"The course of love was a rock-strewn and badly-paved road, it seems?"

"Shut _up_," Sasuke snarled, and realized he could snarl again.

"Sakura-kun," Iruka said from the front of the room, "why do you want to become a ninja?"

"So I can impress Sasuke-kun!" she said, with a giggle.

"And has that wish made her stronger, Sasuke-kun?" Iruka asked.

The old preteen impulse to blush and sink lower in his chair was hard to fight off. "...Not that I know of."

Sakura sniffled, watery green eyes and a blubbering lower lip threatening tears at any minute. "But... but... I really want to impress Sasuke-kun...!"

"There is a world of difference between this trembling little girl and the Godaime Hokage's earth-shattering apprentice," Iruka said, but his eyes were blood-red again. "What made that difference in her possible? What gave her the strength to both ask for her training and to flourish under it?"

"...Determination?"

"She was determined to marry you," Itachi said from the front of the class, dry-voiced, and yet none of Sasuke's fellow students seemed to have seen the difference. "If determination were all it took, she would be your wife, I would be dead at your hand, and the nose-picking, rude young Kyuubi-bearer at your side would have been the first thirteen-year-old Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato."

Then he spoke in Iruka's voice again, the clear strong voice and teacher's practiced enunciation at odds with the secrets held in Itachi's bloody gaze. "Naruto, come down here."

Sasuke reached to stop him reflexively, but Naruto had already bounded out of his seat and climbed over the heads of several classmates to hurry to where 'Iruka' called him. He flung his arms around his teacher's waist and said, "Hey, hey, if I get this one right, will you treat me to ramen?"

"All the ramen you want," Iruka's voice promised him, as Itachi's pale hand smoothed that untamable thatch of spiky straw-gold hair. "What makes you strong, Naruto?"

"Ramen! And wanting to be Hokage!"

"Is he right?" Itachi asked Sasuke.

"Of course not," Sasuke muttered, glaring from behind his hands; it was getting easier with practice.

"Then what is the source of his strength?"

"The Kyuubi," Sasuke said.

"Wrong again," Itachi said, and the walls of the academy fell away as though they'd been peeled apart.

Sasuke was lying on the ground in the forest, with Iruka on his hands and knees above him, coughing blood with Mizuki's huge shuriken in his spine. He couldn't move; there was nothing he could do but stare in horror as Mizuki readied a second weapon for the final strike.

"Did... did Naruto ever tell you... how he graduated?" Iruka coughed, wiping blood from his lips with the back of his hand. "Did you know... I would die for him...?"

"The man is not strong," Itachi said calmly, sitting on his heels beside them, "but he is extraordinary for what he is. His strength is a fool's strength, self-sacrificing, but it is his own, and he pours it out at the feet of his students as though his blood were water. It is his curse and his tragedy that so few have the courage to accept his gift, or even to understand it, when it will kill him one day."

"_DO something, you asshole!"_ Sasuke screamed at his brother.

Itachi stabbed a kunai into the ground, and the world burst open and poured away, leaving Sasuke sprawled on hands and heels staring up at Zabuza's blade caught on the back of Kakashi's steel-plated glove.

"I am broken," Kakashi said cheerfully, his visible eye smiling as though he were simply standing there reading porn. "I had to be broken before I could even begin to understand what strength was. I have been broken so many times I no longer remember what it felt like, when I thought I was whole; but I'm stronger than I was when I was a child, and unscarred, and a fool. Some people only learn through pain. I wish you weren't one of them, Sasuke-kun; you're more like me than I'd ever wish on either of us..."

"You don't let your comrades die, right?" Sasuke challenged him furiously. "You're strong -- Obito was your friend, Obito was my cousin; why did you let him kill my family?"

"It's not that easy," Kakashi said, and pulled a little orange book out of his pocket. "None of us knew. None of us expected it. And if we had -- I told you, I've been broken and remended so many times I've lost count, and each time has left me stronger. I'm fairly sure I'll die of it someday, of course; but until then I grow through being broken, and healing to something more than what I was before. But, Sasuke-kun-- your brother never needed to break to find his strength. If I'd fought him, back then, with what little I understood, I would have died. As surely as you would die fighting him now."

Kakashi flipped a couple of pages with his thumb, still holding back Zabuza's blade with the other hand, and added brightly, "I don't know about you, but I've always found the power of bad porn to be inspirational! Maybe you should start your quest for self-knowledge by studying Icha Icha P--"

From somewhere in the distance, two horribly familiar voices shouted, "_LIAR!"_ An eraser bounced off the top of his shaggy silver head, and Kakashi poofed into nothingness in the resulting cloud of eraser dust; and, now unchecked, Zabuza's sword came down.

There was nothing Sasuke could do but close his eyes and tell himself, _It's a lie. It's all his lies, it's all in his mind, all his sick, psychotic fantasy world--_

In the darkness behind his closed eyelids, the scarlet clouds on Itachi's Akatsuki cloak glowed like banked embers, like the crimson fire in his eyes.

"You're not listening again," Itachi said, and flicked his forehead with a fingertip. Sasuke felt himself falling backwards, and opened his eyes in a panic, landing on his rump in the middle of the training fields.

"What do you _want_ from me?" Sasuke shouted at the tall shadow standing among the trees.

"Comprehension."

"Like _hell!_" There were tears burning in his eyes, and Sasuke scrubbed at them with a mud-streaked fist, because he'd be damned if he let his brother see him cry again. "You killed them! You killed them all! How in the hell am I _ever_ supposed to understand that?"

"Not comprehension of me," Itachi murmured, and moved to sit on his heels beside him. "Comprehension of yourself. Because you've spent your entire life fighting your own nature, and you have nothing to show for it now but self-inflicted pain."

"_Self-inflicted? _You _bastard--_ you -- I've done _every damned thing you've ever asked!_ I've hated you and _hated_ you and I almost killed my best friend, my _lover_, because of _you_, because you wanted me to _hate_, you wanted me stronger, and it's not enough, it's never enough, I can never even _scratch_ you--"

"I know," Itachi said, softly, and gathered him into his arms, and held him still. "I asked more than you were able to endure, more than you were able to become. I do regret that my misestimation of your ability has led you through such pain. But... how were you able to remember the words so clearly, without ever understanding the meaning?"

"You told me to hate you," Sasuke choked, pain burning in his throat as though he'd swallowed fire. "I did that. I hated you so much..."

"You never understood hate, either," Itachi murmured, resting his cheek against the crown of his brother's head. "Hate is cold, and calculating, and uncaring of any consequence. You never hated me, little brother. You were furious with me, and in pain, and lost in denial of everything -- denial of love, denial of courage, denial of passion, denial of your own humanity -- and yet you never learned to hate anyone but yourself. I never meant for that to be the lesson you learned from me."

The regret in his voice was as hushed as any of Itachi's muted emotions, but it was unnervingly sincere, and it made Sasuke's stomach turn to think about it. "Aniki--"

"Have you ever had any glimpse of what it is that gives you your _own_ strength?" Itachi asked. "Or have you simply spent your entire life grasping at my shadow, at the Copy-nin's Chidori, at the thieving snake's cursed seal, at anything and everything that could be a quick and dirty substitute for the need to discover and master your own power..."

"..._Bastard!_" He couldn't even lift his hands to beat at his brother's shoulder; he spat at him instead. "_I did what you told me to!_ I lived like filth, like _worse_ than filth, I clutched at whatever scraps of power I could claw into my hands, and _I hated you_ -- don't _ever_ tell me I didn't hate you enough--"

"Foolish child," Itachi murmured, still holding him close, effortlessly. "Hatred was only ever to be your _first_ step. You should have outgrown the need for hatred -- or for the anger and pain you call hatred -- long ago, at the time when you should have begun to understand yourself."

He couldn't fight; he couldn't scream; all he had left was a sick, cracked half-laugh. "And you understand me, do you, you sick psychotic freak? What is my strength? What would have made me strong enough to kill you?"

"Those are two different questions," Itachi said, "and you would not believe me when I answer either of them for you."

"Try me. What have you got to lose? You pull all the strings here." The venom in his voice was somehow not as satisfying as he'd wanted it to be.

"What I have to lose," Itachi told him, "is your ability ever to accept the truth. These are truths you must realize on your own, learned through understanding your own mind and heart -- and I am both willing and able to keep you here for however long it takes. Both time and space are irrelevant here beneath the illumination of my dark moon."

Itachi sighed just a bit, and added under his breath, "And waiting for you to come to realize anything emotionally or spiritually significant can take a very, _very_ long time, little brother."

Sasuke _really_ wished he could have punched his brother in the face and broken that aristocratic nose for him. He got as far as twitching a fingertip.

"You're closing down again," Itachi said. "Whenever you face anything you don't wish to hear, you turn to denial or to flight. All right. Rest a bit. There is a small nuisance whom I should keep from attempting to disturb you... again." The faintest flicker of irritation crossed his face as he added, "Is there any _rational_ reason why your cat enjoys walking on your head as you sleep?"

"She's hungry," Sasuke said, warily.

"And this has approximately what to do with sitting on your face and pawing at various sensory organs?"

"I'd imagine Naruto and I wake up a lot faster with a paw in the ear. --Under normal circumstances, that is."

"...Ah. I should feed her for you, then. I believe the kitten food is still in the lower cabinet next to the cooking oil?"

"Yes. Thank you," Sasuke said, rather blankly, since the whole conversation was rapidly becoming too surreal for him even in a 'day' filled with banana-peel-open academy classrooms and eraser-banishings of perverted jounin.

_Oh, God. I'm sitting here trapped in my homicidal psychopath brother's doujutsu and talking about where the cat food is... I can't let him get to me, I can't let him get me to agree to what he asks-- I don't know what he wants or why he wants it, this could end up with a trigger left in my mind -- something he could use to make me capture Naruto for him, to give him the children, to give him whatever the hell it is he wants this time--_

"I told you to _rest_," Itachi said, reproving. "You always were terrible at accepting advice." He brushed Sasuke's bangs back from his forehead, and kissed his brow lightly, as their mother had done years and years earlier.

Sasuke struggled blindly, trapped by rage and grief and furious rejection -- "you have _no right!"_ he gasped, shaking all over. "You sick, psychotic sadist-- you have _no right--_"

"Whoa, calm down," a far too familiar voice said next to his ear, still holding him close, holding him still. "Last time I checked I was your dead-last imbecile, not a sadist. Sasuke-bastard, wake _up_ already..."

He tried desperately to turn, to see if it could be real this time, and the moment he took a breath he felt it: the reassuring, solid bulk that filled his body, the children that made it so awkward to move or walk or even breathe. The bedside light flicked on, and Naruto's eyes were as wide and bewildered as the kitten's.

"Must have been one hell of a nightmare," he said softly.

All of the pent-up panic and terror and revulsion and fury that he hadn't been able to feel in the grip of Itachi's control rushed over him in a wave, and Sasuke scrambled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom to be violently sick.

Naruto had followed him every step of the way, all but hovering, and crouched at his side with a wet washcloth, like an anxious puppy not sure if it was about to be cuddled or kicked. "Bastard, you -- aw, hell, obviously you're not okay -- what happened...?"

Sasuke clutched at Naruto's hand as though it were his last lifeline, struggling to keep from retching again at the thought of his brother's effortless invasion of their life, of his mind, of everything that had ever mattered.

"Itachi," he whispered, leaning hard on the wall, trying to force his heart to slow and his breathing to steady before he set off another round of emotionally-induced contractions, because he would die before he allowed his brother to take these children from him -- even through his own fear. "Oh, God, Naruto, he was _here_. He was Iruka-sensei, nobody ever questions Iruka-sensei, not when he comes to visit the two of us-- he--" Sasuke stopped short, and swallowed hard again. "When did you get home...? If he'd still been here-- he still wants you, he-- oh, God..."

"Slow down," Naruto said, cuddling him close and smoothing his hair, as much for his own comfort as for Sasuke's. "You're _sure_ it wasn't a nightmare?"

"It _was_ a nightmare," Sasuke agreed with a short, sharp laugh, "but it was worse than that. _Listen_ to me, Naruto. We _have_ to think of something to do about genjutsu -- I can't keep Sharingan in place to check every person who walks by on the sidewalk, Kakashi-sensei can't be here all the time -- Itachi -- he said it himself, he should never have been allowed to just walk in the door even if he was Iruka-sensei -- except he wasn't-- oh, God--" Sasuke gulped back another wave of panic by sheer force, and shook his head sharply. "When did you come home? How far could he have gone before you came home? --why the hell did I wake up so easily...?"

Naruto's brow was furrowed. "I'm not saying I don't believe you," he said cautiously. "Whatever the hell happened, whether it was Itachi or just a really nasty dream, you're scared enough to make yourself sick over it, and that's _so_ not good right now. So we're gonna fix it. I'll get the guards to scan everybody from now on, okay? Sharingan or no Sharingan, just about anybody can dispel henge. But... are you really, totally sure you didn't just drowse off on the sofa? You were so sound asleep you didn't even notice when I carried you to bed..."

Sasuke dragged both hands down his face, still struggling to keep his breathing even and to bring his heart back under control. "It was Itachi," he said flatly. "I've had too many nightmares of him for too many years not to know the difference. My nightmares let me wake up."

Naruto wrapped an arm around him and squeezed gently, chewing his bottom lip. "Come on, walrus boy, let's roll you back to bed. Linoleum floor isn't exactly the world's most ursapedic sitting-spot for hugely pregnant people; let's get you some pillows and some back-rubbing so you don't tie yourself completely in sick-knots while we figure this thing out..."

The insane normality of it was enough to send Sasuke shaking with reaction again. "'Ursapedic?' ...'_walrus boy?'_"

"Isn't it ursapedic? Where they make things that fit the way your back wants to go?" He lifted Sasuke to his feet and more than half carried him back to the bed, settling him in a bundle of blankets and pillows and tucking and fluffing things at random.

"Ursapedic would be 'bears' feet,'" Sasuke growled. "And you're saying I look like a _walrus_?"

"Well, yeah," Naruto said with a grin. "Sakura-chan says any women on the jury would give you a sympathy acquittal if I called you a cow or a hippo or made oinking noises or anything and you went and murdered me in my sleep. I figured walruses were safer than cows. Different number of legs and stuff, right? And you kinda move like a walrus, all waddling side to side hauling that belly around. It's hilarious. I wish you could see yourself."

"You-- you-- insensitive _asshole_--!"

Sasuke ground the heel of a palm into his eye, fighting to keep from surrendering to tears -- not from Naruto's teasing; from the sheer overwhelming relief that Naruto _was_ here, teasing him, that the kits were safe, that Itachi had set him free for whatever lunatic purpose he pursued. But Naruto didn't seem to recognize that; his eyes were huge with panic.

"Aw shit, bastard, don't cry on me! Don't tell me -- this is that hormonal shit again, right? Sakura-chan's gonna kill me if I make you cry again. If you don't kill me first. --Are walruses _that_ bad? I thought they were kinda cute, how they waddle and stuff..."

Unable to speak around the knot in his throat, Sasuke dredged up his best glare despite the wetness in his eyes, and grabbed Naruto by the collar and shook him a good one, and then he flung both arms around Naruto's ribcage and clung tighter and tighter until Naruto squeaked like one of the kitten's chew toys.

He was still shaking. That was... unacceptable. The whole damn day was _completely_ unacceptable. For right now, though, it was enough just to hide his face in Naruto's excessively orange shoulder and wait until he was certain the world had stopped heaving him around like a rag in a tempest.

"Air," Naruto wheezed. "Need... air... breathe... grk..."

"Moron," Sasuke whispered into his throat, and loosened his hold a little. Just a little, because Naruto was warm and solid and orange and comfortably infuriating; Naruto made him shake with outrage in a way he was accustomed to, a way that didn't involve blood and pain and torment and old, old grief like ashes thick in his throat. So he held on tight instead of saying what he wanted to say, because even after Itachi had walked through his mind and left scrawls of shame as easily as defacing a child's picture book, Sasuke still couldn't say to Konoha's leader and the Rokudaime Hokage, _don't leave me alone; I don't care what it takes, I don't care how many boring council meetings I have to sit through or who stares at me in the Tower or what I interrupt -- don't ever leave me alone again, because I'm too weak to fight now and I know it, and I'm scared._ He was still Uchiha Sasuke, and he still clung to the tattered remnants of what had once been worth calling pride.

Naruto was patting him, awkwardly, because his elbows were pinned to his sides by the force of Sasuke's desperate hold; he shifted a little, wriggled and stretched until he could turn the awkward pets into something more solid and soothing, his fingertips rubbing a pattern up and down the small of Sasuke's back, where the strain of the weight gathered. "It's okay," he murmured, "it's all okay now. You're fine, the kits are fine. Nobody's going to hurt you. --Unless you count me saying something stupid, but I'm always doing that. It's gonna be okay. Come on, cuddle-buns, just relax and let me give you a good backrub..."

"..._cuddle-buns?_"

"What's the matter now? You don't like walruses," Naruto grumped, his fingertips finding the knots of tension in Sasuke's lower back and kneading at them lightly. "I mean it. Let me get my hands free so I can work on you better. You're all tensed up."

"No shit," Sasuke muttered, both hands fisting in the fabric of Naruto's shirt to keep himself from cracking and pouring it all out: _I'm scared, I'm so scared, I've never been this weak, never cared this much for anyone so vulnerable, they're so vulnerable, I'M so vulnerable, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it but trust you and the ANBU, and I'm never going to trust the ANBU again, not after today, so please, don't ever leave me alone again, not ever, I can't stand it anymore..._

He swallowed back the tangle of horror and sick panic, and bit his lip hard, and shifted his hold so that he was clinging to Naruto around the ribs instead of around the forearms. It was as much as he could do; even his own furious, injured pride couldn't get him to stop clinging, or to stop shaking.

Naruto was rubbing his head against Sasuke's cheek almost like the kitten did, both hands busy kneading at the tension in his back, bringing their bodies closer so that Sasuke's bulge was warmly cradled against his stomach and hips. Naruto seemed to be doing his level best to manage a full-body hug, and murmuring reassurances under his breath almost like a purr -- or a growl.

"Come on, head against my shoulder, just let yourself go limp -- let it all go, let me hold you together. I'm right here holding you, I'll keep you safe -- it's going to be fine. Nobody's going to get through me. _Nobody._ So you can let go now... just relax, just let me hold you..." He gathered up a bundle of blankets and wrapped them willy-nilly around them both, then started kneading again. "Don't go all tense again, but do you want to talk...? Stupid question, I know, but one of these days the world's going to flip over like a pancake and you're gonna say yes..."

With his face buried against the warm crook between Naruto's throat and shoulder, Sasuke mumbled, "What is there to talk about? My psychotic brother walked into our house without so much as a nod from the ANBU, and if he'd wanted to kill me I'd be dead right now. What is talking going to do to change that?"

Naruto rubbed quietly for a long moment, and then offered, "Assuming it _wasn't_ all a really, really nasty dream -- if he'd raised killing-levels of chakra, surely they would have sensed that. And he'd have known they'd sense that, too. So... was this like the psychopath version of a baby shower or something? 'Cause you're fine, other than being panicky -- don't get me wrong, I totally understand you being panicky, it's just that I'm a lot more used to thinking of Sasuke's-psycho-big-brother-equals-blood-everywhere types of events, and unless the kitten went and scratched you when I wasn't looking... anyway, I think I'm saying since he didn't want you dead, what _did_ he want?"

"What does he ever want?" Sasuke whispered, eyes shut tight. "To preach about strength, to mock me for a weak failure who still hasn't learned enough hatred..."

"Now see, I've got one hell of a bone to pick with the bastard there," Naruto growled. "That whole true-strength-is-hatred thing is a total load of _bullshit_, and I want to kick his ass up between his ears for screwing your head up like that for so damn much of your life already! --Even aside from the multitude of other reasons for kicking his ass up between his ears, which is saying something!"

Sasuke heard himself make a noise that could have been a chuckle if it hadn't been half muffled in Naruto's shoulder.

"The whole problem is that he's always been right," Sasuke murmured. "I'm _still_ shaking. If I can't even control my own emotions enough to keep my hands steady the next time I see his face -- how am I ever going to kill him when I can't even stand straight and look him in the eyes, because I'm half blind with the pain and the fear and the memories? I can't defeat him until I can defeat myself, until I can truly drive out _every_ emotion when I need to fight..."

Naruto made an extremely rude noise that sounded like it had the word "bullshit" stuffed in the middle of it. Sasuke lifted his head a little, blinking.

"Look at me, bastard. _I'm_ strong," Naruto told him fiercely, "and you _know_ I've never been all Zen rock garden calm like that in my _life_."

Sasuke snorted. "You don't need to control your temper when you've got a demon in your gut to back you up as you start tearing chunks out of the landscape. We don't all have that kind of firepower to draw on, so intellect has to make up for brute force for some of us."

"What makes me strong has got nothing to do with Kyuubi," Naruto said, still kneading Sasuke's lower back. "If Kyuubi was all there was to it, there'd be no difference between me and the way Gaara used to be. And I get creeped out when I think about you and somebody like old-style-Gaara. The two of you would _so_ have brain-icicled each other to death it's not even funny."

"...'brain-icicled'?"

"You know. That 'I'm-more-badass-than-thou' silent-glare-eye-stabbity-hmph thing you and Gaara and Neji do at everybody." Naruto squeezed his eyes mostly shut and curled his lip in a comically bad attempt at looking forbidding; it mostly looked constipated, and Sasuke clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing aloud at him.

"You should have seen me getting slept on by the little nuisance earlier," he admitted, because with Naruto he could admit these things sometimes. ...Mostly because Naruto laughed at him whether or not he admitted anything, so it wasn't like trying to keep a secret would spare him from getting laughed at. "_Nobody_ can look aloof and imposing when they're being slept on by a snore-purring kitten. Poor Iruka-sensei looked so..."

Then Sasuke stopped, and swallowed hard again.

"You're all right," Naruto reminded him, rubbing his shoulders. "The kits are all right. He didn't hurt you."

Sasuke sighed deeply, and reached past Naruto toward the curtains. The rain was pattering against the glass again, without sounding like it intended to let up.

"Hey, stop squirming--" Naruto tried to pin his hand; he dropped a shoulder and twisted by reflex, and his fingertips touched the drapes.

Sasuke's blood turned to ice in his veins.

Beneath the bloody not-light of the Tsukuyomi moon, Naruto's hair was dyed the color of hellflame.

"Aw, shit. You were calming down and everything," the not-boy said, with half his face painted in a bloody mask by the unlight. "Well, he said you were impatient. Don't suppose I can convince you to just close the curtains...?"

Sasuke's hands laced around the thing's throat, and he slammed its head against the window so hard it was a shock that the glass didn't splinter -- but then, this was still his brother's sick warped world. He couldn't see for the tears burning in his eyes, and he couldn't speak around the knot of rage and agony and sick betrayal in his throat, but his hands knew the shape of Naruto's throat, warm and fragile, life pulsing beneath his fingertips, and he squeezed.

"S-s-sasu--"

"_Don't say that!_" Sasuke snarled. "_Don't say my name in his voice -- you --"_

"Stop that," Itachi said from the doorway. "It was challenging to come up with a construct that tapped into enough of your memories of him for you to believe it."

Sasuke let go of the thing's throat and twisted about and threw himself blind at his brother. But the thing caught him around the waist -- gently, terrifyingly gently -- and then Sasuke was flat on his back in the bed, and the not-Naruto was standing between Itachi and his brother.

And it had claws.

"I told him nobody was going to hurt him. I told him if they tried they were going through me," it rumbled. "I don't go back on my word."

"You are not Naruto," Itachi said, nonplussed.

"I'm damn well close enough," the thing said, with a fox-fanged grin. "You made me that way yourself, remember?"

Itachi's mouth flattened, and then with a sharp flick of a hand the room melted away. The not-Naruto thing cried out and reached for Sasuke in the moment before the orange and gold bled away into the fire of the old room where Itachi sat at the table and the kits drowsed in a bundle of blankets.

"You _bastard,"_ Sasuke choked, hollow-bodied and numb again, his ability to feel bleeding out of him like an open wound. "You bastard-- you-- killed him, killed it, you--"

"You were going to break its neck with your bare hands a minute ago," Itachi reminded him, unimpressed.

"That's _different_, that's-- you--"

"This is becoming tedious," Itachi said, and reached over and touched a fingertip to Sasuke's brow. "Sleep."

He couldn't even rage as the world bled away into nothing.


End file.
